Metaphors
by arenewedsense
Summary: Blaise & Pansy reflect. A companion to Retrospect & Consideration. Complete


**Fire**

Pansy had always been a little like fire. She burned hot, she moved fast and she always sucked the air right out of the room. There was always a spark, always a hint that something burned deeper, something that could roar into flames at any given moment. Over any little thing.

That was probably why he fell in love with her. Or maybe it was more self-centered than that. Pansy had the ability to make anyone feel in control, by comparison alone. She lashed out, then burned out. It was always chaos. At least that's what he had thought.

Falling in love with her was easy. She consumed him in an instance. Falling into bed with her was much the same. After a dozen or so late nights it became almost second nature to fall into stride with her between classes. They were as much a thing as a thing could be, without any discussion on the matter. They studied together, they ate together, they summered together.

Summer might have been when she began to flicker. It was hard to say. After it all, he assumed it was the war, but that didn't seem right. Flames like hers ate away the darkness, not the other way around. So it must have been that summer. Because the only way to put out a fire is to suffocate it. And no one was more suffocating than pureblood matchmaking matriarchs.

Conversations stopped holding heat. Burning nights became just plain burned out. The spark racing through her fizzled, just smothered with How Things Were Done. He probably should have fought for her then, between marriage negotiations and estate events. He should have tried to fan the flames with the pages of their prenuptial agreement. But he had grown weary keeping up with the fire, while still trying to fall in line.

Because he wasn't a little like fire. Not even close. Blaise thought of himself more like a golfer. He had to play through in order to escape the game. Golfers had no business with fire, but he had used her heat to keep him warm regardless. That's probably what smothered her.

By the time he had fought for her, it was well past too late. And in honesty, it wasn't the way she needed to be fought for. Blaise had realized, sometime around their second Christmas together, that while Pansy was fire, she wasn't chaos. The rise and falls of her heat were entirely predictable. She fought for what she loved, she would incind anything that threatened what she held dear.

She held him dear, and at some point he had lead her to believe her very nature was a threat to their relationship. Because he held the game in high regard, he wanted to get through, he wanted to get out and he wanted to spend the rest of his life basking in her flames. But fire was far too temperamental for getting through, no it burned through, it was a risk. So he had, at some point taught her to burn less.

After a war they had no part in, both between the shades of the magical world and the hues of their relationship, it was no wonder they fell apart. It was probably the most loving thing he could do for the woman, to walk away and let her brighten the world without his restraint. He loved her so much, but he was all that killed her.

Pansy was a lot like fire, but he had grown too comfortable in hell to feel appreciate her heat.

 **Ice**

Blaise was something like ice. He was broken, so beautifully broken she could line up the cracks in him with her own. He was big, and strong, and cold. He hid those cracks so well, so deeply. He was immovable, piercing, and constant.

She hadn't realized she loved him, at first. So caught up yanking at the chains her lineage had burdened her with, she didn't realize he was freezing over them, giving her an opportunity to shatter the iron. No, first he was convenient.

Mother wanted her to snare a Sacred. Pansy just wanted somewhere to hide from her. Draco had fit both bills, it seemed. He was loud, boisterous, poison. But Blaise was her safe harbor through the storm. Through every storm, whether it be maternal or romantic, scholastic or social. So when she fell into bed with him it had seemed all together natural. He may have been ice, but she was the one who melted.

The first night was ground moving, she's not sure why she expected less from a glacier. The dawn rose with her uncertainty. But he was still there, and he never really left after that. Constant, as always.

She was surprised to discover after a while, that the typography of him as a person was different from what she expected. He was larger than life, but always so steady, so restrained. The contrast enthralled her. She was addicted, and before long in love. Marrying him was a dream, but somehow it wasn't one that came true.

The summer before the darkness truly struck Hogwarts was a twisted bliss. Like the first snow day of the year, where you're so excited to slide down the hillsides and skate across the ice that you don't notice your hands turning blue. The warmest time of the year in sunny southern Italy had shown her how bitterly ice can turn against you.

If she was being charitable, despite every iota of her personality and upbringing, she could acknowledge that he had been driven to it. All he said he had ever wanted from her was to get through it. She wasn't sure what he had meant that first night, whispering it in her ear as she drifted to sleep. Pansy probably should have taken the time to figure it out. But that was too far against her nature.

He had said it again in the vineyard, while the shade cast by grapevines danced across his skin. So sharply contrasted by his pressed button up shirt. I love you, lets get through it. Let's get married. Let them have the beautiful wedding, let us have a beautiful marriage.

But something about being traded like cattle had snapped in her. Pansy accounted it to how emboldened she had become, on his confidence in her. So addictive, the fantasy of her being this force of nature seemed so real. But the truth came crashing down. She wasn't a force of nature, like Blaise. She was the only daughter of the least wealthy and reputable line of British pureblood pricks. She didn't have autonomy, she had value, and it was to be traded.

It hurt him so much to see her fighting against their parents, and she realized it must look something like fighting against him. Pansy was never a woman of soft wards, they were too empty or too vulnerable. She was a woman of action, and she was showing him something in her resistance. So instead, she demurred. She took a page from Daphne's book, and morphed into something like a parental dream. She stuffed her rage, her fear, her pain down deep, committed to getting through for Blaise.

But the ice was already broken, and he never seemed to recover. Wedded bliss was on the other side of 7th year, and as she struggled through it he just froze up. She realized it was over, bitter at the irony, near Christmas as snow curled down on Hogwarts. She couldn't see him for the magnitude he once was, now all she had was cold like the world outside.

They were both frozen now, in place with one another. Neither wanted to leave, but no one thought to stay really either. Hand in hand they had drifted apart. Eventually, she felt the lack of him curl into something like resentment. Pansy couldn't tell if it was his or hers, but it was tangible. Not long after that, he walked away and three months later on their would have been wedding day, she found comfort in the ice he had left in her veins.


End file.
